Two Earth-sized planets with lukewarm temperatures have been discovered by NASA's Kepler space telescope. They are 1,200 light years away, orbiting a star in the constellation Lyra, and their distance from their host star, means that they exist in the zone that could potentially host life. And their temperatures are not unlike an early Spring day on Earth]

These planets could be solid, rocky, like earth, or could be gassy with very low density, according to professor of astronomy at Berkeley, Geoff Marcy -

When a planet candidate transits, or passes in front of the star from the spacecraft's vantage point, a percentage of light from the star is blocked. The resulting dip in the brightness of the starlight reveals the transiting planet's size relative to its star. Using the transit method, Kepler has detected 2,740 candidates. Using various analysis techniques, ground telescopes and other space assets, 122 planets have been confirmed.

Early in the mission, the Kepler telescope primarily found large, gaseous giants in very close orbits of their stars. Known as "hot Jupiters," these are easier to detect due to their size and very short orbital periods. Earth would take three years to accomplish the three transits required to be accepted as a planet candidate. As Kepler continues to observe, transit signals of habitable zone planets the size of Earth orbiting stars like the sun will begin to emerge.

One summer at least a decade ago, my daughter and I were driving across North Dakota at night. If you've never been there, it's pretty much a big mostly vacant prairie, so light pollution is not much of a issue.

Mini-me and I were chattering about nothing in particular as we drove; out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of light. I pulled over off the highway and told her to come join me.

We lay on the hood of my car for almost 45 minutes watching the Northern Lights play across the sky, not talking, just watching the lights flash and dance over the horizon, shot through with faint greens, blues, and every now and then, reds. We were completely alone the entire time, no one even passed on the road. It was beautiful.

One of my favorite girl-child memories.

Logged

“Be skeptical. But when you get proof, accept proof.” –Michael Specter

I'd love to have the opportunity to check out the night sky with some powerful teslescopes.

Reagrdless of God belief, the stars on a clear night are just super amazing.

If you live near any significant population center, there is likely an astronomy club that will allow you to view the sky thought their scopes. Our local club has owners of some very nice scopes, and some are quite adept at astrophotography. Here is a link to some astrophotos taken by one of our club members (very skilled to say the least, and very experienced, and with some excellent equipment).

On your own, you can delve into astronomy without too much expense. A good sized Dobsonian mount scope, say 6" or 8" reflector, can be bought new for well under $1,000. In fact, I have a 6" Orion Dob that I bought used for about $250.

Don't be too disappointed, but there's not much to see when looking at "stars" through a scope. Unless you are going to split double or triple stars, or just like to see the variations in color and magnitude. The planets, especially Saturn and Venus, and deep sky objects like clusters, nebulae and galaxies, are where the WOW factors are. Most folks gasp at their first viewing of Saturn through a relatively small Dobsonian reflector!

I live in the middle of nowhere now but I still can't see as many stars in that last video.

-Nam

Astrophotography and astrovideo capture much more light than your eyes can, even with a very good scope. The longer the exposure, the more light is captured.

Many of the best astrophotos are "stacks" or tens, hundreds, and sometimes thousands of exposures, to multiply the effects of light capture.

From wikipedia: Post-processing

The Pleiades Star Cluster photographed with a 6 megapixel digital SLR camera connected to a 80mm refracting telescope piggybacked on a larger telescope. Image is made from seven 180 second images combined and processed in Photoshop with a noise reduction plugin. Both digital camera images and scanned film images are usually adjusted in image processing software to improve the image in some way. Images can be brightened and manipulated in a computer to adjust color and increase the contrast. More sophisticated techniques involve capturing multiple images (sometimes thousands) to composit together in an additive process to sharpen images to overcome poor atmospheric seeing, negating tracking issues, bringing out faint objects with a poor signal-to-noise ratio, and filtering out light pollution. Digital camera images may also need further processing to reduce the image noise from long exposures, including subtracting a “dark frame” and a processing called image stacking or "Shift-and-add". There are several commercial and freeware software packages available specifically for astronomical photographic image manipulation

Beautiful clear sky here today, so I hopped in the car and drove 90 minutes west and over a mountain range to get some real darkness. I headed off the main road and then just turned down random farm roads looking for somewhere special. I ended up on a dirt track and then settled down on the road with a blanket and cushions and just stared at the sky for about 45 minutes. Indescribably beautiful. I must have been looking at a million stars, and to think I was seeing a fraction of just one galaxy. It makes my brain hurt trying to conceive of the vastness of the universe.